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Empowering Maxime Bernier

Bernier’s departure from the Conservative Party of Canada was bitter and from most appearances self-serving. The timing spoke to a planned effort to cause the most disruption possible for Scheer as he began the CPC convention in Halifax. There is little doubt as well that much of Bernier’s motivation is driven by sour grapes after having been handed a leadership loss to Scheer by the narrowest of margins. Some second place finishers can handle remaining within the party to try again another day and some simply can’t. We don’t need to wonder where Bernier lands now.

Scheer covered pretty much all of the above when he responded to Bernier’s exit.

Things could have been left at that. A man was embittered and he parted ways with the party in an explosive way. Life goes on and the party moves forward. Unfortunately the Conservative Party of Canada then moved into their convention and seemed to almost purposely work to prove some of Maxime Bernier’s contentions correct.

Christopher Bataluk summed it up excellently in the tweet below:

What I am getting at is the party’s unwavering support for Canada’s Soviet style supply management system due to Andrew Scheer cutting a deal with the dairy cartel in order to win the party leadership.

It is no secret that Scheer sold his political soul to Canada’s supply management lobby in order to win the leadership with a tiny margin. Scheer even gallingly joked about the deal at the press gallery dinner this year as he guzzled milk for the crowd.

Look, I understand how politics works and understand that deals get cut.

At some point though a leader has to choose between well funded minority lobbying interests and the interests of the party and the nation. The only principle we are seeing out of Scheer right now is that when Scheer gets bought, he stoically stays bought.

Supply management is undoubtedly one of the worst and outdated economic policies in Canada. There is utterly no reasonable defense of the policy from a fiscally conservative perspective and any conservative trying to defend the policy is either delusional or to be frank, full of shit. The dairy cartel has been incredibly effective in lobbying for this rotten policy that rips off all Canadians (particularly low income ones) to the point where a “conservative” leader won’t even show shame in protecting it.

A proposal to debate ending support for supply management was to be presented to the Conservative Party of Canada’s membership yesterday. The party blatantly killed the proposal before members could even debate it much less vote on it.

I am familiar with these tactics. I was VP of policy with the Wildrose Party for multiple terms. If we wanted to make sure that a controversial policy didn’t actually make it to the floor this is exactly the sort of thing we would do. It gives the impression that the policy was addressed while not actually letting it get into open discussion where there is potential for embarrassment. We did this with policy proposals that were crazy or offensive however, not with ones contrary to the very core of conservative principles such as supply management.

The bottom line is that if the CPC wanted to let members debate supply management at their convention, they would have. They purposely buried the proposal despite it being a big news item lately which is causing our entire nation untold grief with NAFTA negotiations.

The only reason to bury this debate was solely to protect Scheer’s deal with the Canadian dairy cartel.

Within hours of killing any debate on supply management, Scheer was in attendance with his masters at a reception. They surely patted him on the head and promised more dollars for future campaigns.

It is through this sort of action that Bernier will not be going away. It is in proving that there is intellectual dishonesty within the party that Bernier will be able to capture supporters and donors with his fledgling party. Bernier could have been shepherded into the political sunset but instead Scheer chose to empower him through his dogged support for the lobby that bought his leadership.

No, I do not support Bernier nor am I calling for people to get behind his new party. I am however disgusted with the behavior of the CPC under Scheer right now and through these actions he very likely ensured that we will have another term of Trudeau.

Let’s face it, Scheer has demonstrated all of the political charm and hype of an over ripe eggplant so far. Most of the nation couldn’t pick him out of a lineup and his chances of dethroning Trudeau next year were already rather limited to say the least. If Scheer is to win the next general election, it will be by the most narrow of margins. That will be pretty much impossible if Bernier is taking 10% or so out of him in select ridings throughout Canada and Scheer just gave Bernier a great wedge issue to work with.

We can and should be upset with how Bernier has done things.

We shouldn’t forget however that through his unwavering loyalty to the dairy cartel that Scheer has turned Bernier from a lone malcontent into a potential leader of a spoiler party in the next election.

Scheer could have defused this by simply letting members debate the policy. If supply management went down, he could shrug and say it was the will of the members.

8 thoughts on “Empowering Maxime Bernier”

Can’t help but feel a little cynical about it all, but then maybe Bernier could have made some headway from within. It’s hard to know now, but it’s pretty much guaranteed off the table for at least several more years. Poorly done all round.

The Harper majority went down in flames because Stephen and the Conservative Party offered nothing more than stewardship at a time when there was an opportunity — indeed an elephant-in-the-living-room call — for bold moves on many fronts. Canada could have lead the Western world’s reaction against entrenched interests, but our milquetoast Conservatives demurred, leaving it up to Americans with their unlikely champion, Trump. The reason Donald Trump won and will likely win even bigger next time, is that, ironically, he leads the reaction against the combined forces of the “new” culture (same as all the old decadent cultures through history) and kleptocrats. It might have been time for a Conservative defeat but to have gone down without any semblance of bravery or vision is just unforgivable. I’ll vote for Bernier blindly, or not vote at all, because there is no hope of conservative results to come from voting PC (They might as well put the “progressive” back in the party name.)

Sadly I have to agree with both Eric and old white guy, although I am still undecided as to how I’ll vote. Much as I believe Scheer is too liberal, I believe Trudeau’s worldview and ineptitude are disastrous and I will vote to have him defeated if there seems to be a way.

Count me in as a Bernier supporter too. He is voicing true conservative values (as he always has), and he’ll get my vote and money.
Scheer is a weak, uninspiring and feckless leader. I have yet to find anyone that actually likes/genuinely approves of him as leader, only blind faith followers trying to convince themselves that they might be able to find victory in 2019 under Scheer. But he’s not a winner. If he was, he’d be easily ahead in the polls already with all of Sock Boy’s endless gaffs, mis-steps and completely idiotic positions and actions thus far, at home and on the world stage..
Max was wise to make his move now, and I think the PC’s are also in FAR deeper trouble than they think.

Scheer and the CPC also failed to mention an issue that is big with us hunters and westerners in general, the proposed Liberal handgun theft from legal owners without compensation.

Scheer has made no mention of this issue since Ralph Goodale floated the idea after the Faisal Hussain shootings.

I’ve voted conservative since the days of Trudeau the first,starting with his second election,when I was sick of the guy’s arrogance and contempt for the West. I will now switch my vote to Bernier who has already come out in favor of legal gun owners,and if he has no candidate in my Riding,will vote for an Independent candidate.
Scheer is only marginally better than Trudeau,and has little to no chance of defeating Trudeau even if Max Bernier had never existed.

The much reviled “backroom boys” in the LPC seem to know how to navigate through the treacherous waters of a political campaign, the CPC acts like they have a bunch of high school kids in the back room. Unless Bernier can siphon off a lot of votes in Quebec, Trudeau will win the next election in a walk.The CPC will be lucky to hold on to the 97 seats they currently have.

How much money do the egg and milk cartel scum actually donate? With the maximums it’s hard to believe we’re talking about all that much given there’s only 1200 dairy farmers for example.

Anyway supply management could have been a good election issue. We promise milk, egg, butter, and cheese prices will be cut in half if we’re elected. Vote conservative and stop enriching a select few who have a dairy quota.

But oh no, can’t have that have to take the donations. I’m not renewing my membership and never donating or volunteering again. I’m out for good.

Mr. Scheer campaigned hard for, and won the job he truly wanted (ie: perpetual leader of the opposition). That way he doesn’t have to really work hard, or think big thoughts.
I’ll throw some bucks at Max, if he can get it off the ground, and it is better than wasting them on the current CPC.